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 鈥� or whether 鈥� 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 U.S. is spending record money suppressing wildfires that are only getting more deadly and severe with climate change. But there are signs the needle is moving toward more upfront prevention work. -
Extreme weather events made worse by climate change are hitting some of the poorest parts of the United States hard. Recovery will be extra difficult at a time of high inflation. -
"Unprecedented" floods wash out bridges, basements, and roads, close hospital -
The pandemic was especially tough for up-and-coming musicians from smaller cities and towns. But for at least one country rocker from the rural Northwest, it may have leveled the playing field. -
The country's first national park has opted to change the name after research uncovered the involvement of Gustavus Doane in an attack that killed 173 Native Americans. -
A Tucson, Ariz. shelter for migrant asylum seekers crossing into the US is seeing record capacity, despite a federal judge's order upholding Trump-era public health border restrictions. -
Experts say the Southwestern U.S. is drier than it's been in some 1,200 years, which is one of, but not the only, drivers of the large infernos burning in New Mexico. -
The nation's fifth largest school district has seen a jump in violent incidents since returning from 15 months of virtual-only classes. -
Boulder is again under a red flag warning for extreme wildfire danger as powerful winds like those that fanned a destructive blaze in December return to the drought stricken region. -
Moderate Republicans are organizing in opposition to extremists gaining control of the party. -
In the West, ski resorts are banking on a Spring Break surge after a rough winter of prolonged drought, labor and housing shortages and frustrated customers. -
Rising gas prices and the war in Ukraine supercharged demand for mining to support electrifying the country's transportation grid, but some of it lies on land considered sacred to Native Americans.
