Kirk Siegler
As a correspondent on NPR's national desk, Kirk Siegler covers rural life, culture and politics from his base in Boise, Idaho.
His beat explores the intersection and divisions between rural and urban America, including longer term reporting assignments that have taken him frequently to a struggling timber town in Idaho that lost two sawmills right before the election of President Trump. In 2018, after the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, Siegler spent months chronicling the diaspora of residents from Paradise, exploring the continuing questions over how – or whether – the town should rebuild in an era of worsening climate-driven wildfires.
Siegler's award winning reporting on the West's bitter land use controversies has taken listeners to the heart of anti-government standoffs in Oregon and Nevada, including a rare interview with recalcitrant rancher Cliven Bundy. He's also profiled numerous ranching and mining communities from Nebraska to New Mexico that have worked to reinvent themselves in a fast-changing global economy.
Siegler also contributes extensively to the network's breaking news coverage, from floods and hurricanes in Louisiana to deadly school shootings in Connecticut. In 2015, he was awarded an international reporting fellowship from Johns Hopkins University to report on health and development in Nepal. While en route to the country, the worst magnitude earthquake to hit the region in more than 80 years struck. The fellowship was cancelled, but Siegler was one of the first foreign journalists to arrive in Kathmandu and helped lead NPR's coverage of the immediate aftermath of the deadly quake. He also filed in-depth reports focusing on the humanitarian disaster and challenges of bringing relief to some of the Nepal's far-flung rural villages.
Before helping open the network's first ever bureau in Idaho at the studios of Boise State Public Radio in 2019, Siegler was based at the NPR West studios in Culver City, California. Prior to joining NPR in 2012, Siegler spent seven years reporting from Colorado, where he became a familiar voice to NPR listeners reporting on politics, water and the state's ski industry from Denver for NPR Member station KUNC. He got his start in political reporting covering the Montana Legislature for Montana Public Radio.
Apart from a brief stint working as a waiter in Sydney, Australia, Siegler has spent most of his adult life living in the West. He grew up in Missoula, Montana, and received a journalism degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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The Biden administration is restoring the original boundaries of two large national monuments in Utah - Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante.
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Ranchers in North Dakota have been forced to sell off their herds at historic rates. Now they're worried they won't have enough feed to keep their remaining cows alive this winter. -
Decimated by the deadly Camp Fire in 2018, Paradise, Calif., is now moving to acquire some high-risk properties and turn them into managed park land to buffer against future wildfires. -
Tourists are visiting national parks and surrounding public lands in record numbers this summer, which is causing some overwhelmed national park gateway towns to rethink their promotion strategies. -
Growing crowds at America's national parks have prompted some of them to allow entry by reserved tickets only. Arches National Park in Utah may be next, and there's renewed controversy over that step. -
People are trying to come to grips with Monday's mass shooting at a grocery store. A 21-year-old man from suburban Denver has been charged with 10 counts of murder in the first degree.
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Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has a long and seemingly insurmountable to-do list, including a pledge to begin repairing a legacy of broken treaties and other abuses against tribes. -
Of the 109 people currently listed as missing in South Dakota, 77 of them are indigenous. The state's legislature passed a bill this week to address the alarming crisis on and off reservations. -
The Rosebud Sioux Tribe is vaccinating its community at rates faster than the rest of South Dakota. That mirrors a trend in Indian Country, which has been hard-hit by the coronavirus. -
The Biden administration is expected to be sued over its ban on new oil and gas leasing on federal land. In top fossil fuel states like Wyoming, cuts to services and mass layoffs were already looming.
