Acclimatisation societies to naturalise all kinds of new species —as long as they had no harmful effect— were established in New Zealand by European colonists from the 1860s, with the first likely having been established in Auckland around 1861. The Otago Acclimatisation Society was operating by 1864. By 1869, it was receiving £500 per year from the Otago provincial government to bring in familiar British species, notably small birds, such as starlings, blackbirds, sparrows, chaffinches, of which populations thrive around Dunedin today.