“I PARTICIPATED in the World Parks Congress in Sydney last week and learned a new phrase: ‘a black elephant.’ A black elephant, explained the London-based investor and environmentalist Adam Sweidan, is a cross between ‘a black swan’ (an unlikely, unexpected event with enormous ramifications) and the ‘elephant in the room’ (a problem that is visible to everyone, yet no one still wants to address it) even though we know that one day it will have vast, black-swan-like consequences. Read Friedman’s latest NYTimes article about his visit to the World Parks Congress and get his take on large landscape conservation.