The big pandapple

Pol: Bring ’em to Cent. Park Zoo

A local politician isn’t giving up on her obsession to bring giant pandas to the Big Apple — even as critics are bam-booing her plan.

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan/Brooklyn/ Queens), who has been pushing to bring the beloved black-andwhite bears from China to New York for years, announced Sunday that she is holding a posh party at the Waldorf Astoria on Feb. 7 to try to fund her dream.

“The greatest city on Earth deserves to have pandas,’’ Maloney told radio host John Catsimatidis,

“We have everything. We even have the president-elect here now. What would really [draw] people here is the first set of pandas in Central Park.”

Mayor de Blasio has said taxpayers can’t be expected to foot the bill — two pandas would cost about $1 million a year in upkeep.

Maloney initially suggested the Bronx Zoo could take the creatures but is now lobbying the Central Park Zoo. She suggested that the small zoo has plenty of room on its northern side.

A spokesman for the zoo refused comment.

But a zoo worker told The Post, “Where would they go? They would be encroaching on the space of the snow leopards, and that’s our biggest attraction.”

Matt Rossell, an activist with Animal Defenders International, added that “zoos are realizing they cannot create an environment natural enough for the panda to breed. Pandas [are] a tricky species to keep in captivity.”