A new administrator has been appointed to head the Department of Land and Natural Resources State Historic Preservation Division.
Alan S. Downer replaces Pua Aiu, who resigned July 2 after National Park Service officials reported the division still had serious problems, including a failure to maintain a readily accessible historic properties database, and retained its high-risk grantee status, meaning it could lose its more than $500,000 in annual federal grants. The service has given SHPD until May 2014 to make improvements.
The division works to preserve and sustain reminders of earlier times that link the past to the present, according to the DLNR. The division comprises three branches: history and culture, archaeology and architecture.
Downer served 27 years as director of the Navajo Nations Historic Preservation Department in Window Rock, Ariz. He was hired in 1986 to establish the preservation department, the first of its type in the nation, according to the DLNR. Today, the Navajo Nations Historic Preservation Department remains one of the largest public historic preservation agencies in the U.S.
He most recently served as special adviser to the executive director for the Navajo Nation Division of Natural Resources, which is a multiagency resource management organization responsible for the management and stewardship of natural and cultural resources of the Navajo nation, according to the DLNR.
Before that he worked three years as senior archaeologist for the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and oversaw the western U.S. In this position, Downer had the responsibility of reviewing many “Section 106” cases for Hawaii and worked extensively with project sponsors, federal agencies, Native Hawaiian groups and SHPD, according to the DLNR. Downer also worked as a senior archaeologist between 1978 and 1983 for the Illinois Department of Conservation’s Historic Sites Division.
Downer holds a bachelor’s degree in geology, a master’s degree in anthropological archaeology and a doctorate in applied anthropology, according to the DLNR.
Prior to Downer’s appointment, Leslie Kobata, deputy registrar of the Bureau of Conveyances, served as interim administrator.
