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.
-
Western cities dealing with an explosion of homelessness are urging the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that sharply limits camping bans in parks and other public places.
-
A local artist is turning the mountains of plastic garbage that wash up on beaches into dramatic sculptures of the very marine life threatened by the deluge of plastics.
-
A year after the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history devastated Paradise, the state grapples with tough questions about how to rebuild in the era of worsening wildfires.
-
Helena Mayor Wilmot Collins' strategy is to meet as many people as possible and make connections on common issues such as trade and student loan debt.
-
The Trump administration says the controversial acting head of the Bureau of Land Management is keeping his job through the end of the year, despite legal questions surrounding his appointment.
-
The number of refugees being allowed into the U.S. is the lowest it's been since 1980. Some smaller resettlement agencies are closing, putting refugees' lives further in limbo.
-
A fire aboard a boat on a chartered diving trip has left dozens missing and feared lost at sea. Some crew members have been rescued, and an extensive search operation is underway.
-
The Trump administration plans to open up parts of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to more mining and grazing. It's become a flashpoint in the grab for public lands.
-
The U.S. Forest Service is proposing changes to a landmark environmental law that would allow it to fast-track some forest management projects, including logging and prescribed burning.
-
Chief Vicki Christiansen says the danger is now year-round, thanks to hazardous conditions in forests, rampant home development and the changing climate.