"We commend Mayor de Blasio for standing up against the "pandemonium" over the Central Park Zoo. Pandas are complex animals who, as breeding pairs, require over 10 square miles of forested space in the wild. They don't belong in a cramped enclosure in the middle of the biggest, most chaotic city in the country.

Pandas cost over a million dollars a year to keep, a commitment that New York's zoos aren't interested in shouldering. At zoos, pandas live in unnaturally small habitats for the amusement of guests under the guise of conservation, even though hundreds of pandas are kept captive despite lack of room and resources, and few have been successfully introduced to the wild."