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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Unusual and tragic are two words that might describe the 2023 wildfire season which experts say might end up being a game changer for U.S. fire policy.
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The White House has reached what it says is an historic agreement over the restoration of salmon in the Pacific Northwest, a deal that could end for now a decades long legal battle with tribes. -
Colorado's booming urban population flipped the state from red to blue, allowing a referendum on reintroducing wolves to pass. But that growing population now may be too big for them to thrive. -
A long running effort to permanently boost pay for thousands of federal wildland firefighters is finally gaining traction in Congress but fire managers warn it could be too little too late. -
Five years after of one of America's worst wildfires, slow and expensive recovery continues in Paradise, Calif., which could be a portent for what's ahead on fire-stricken Maui. -
The Biden administration is trying to dramatically change how and where oil and gas drilling occurs on federal land, which is getting mixed reviews in longtime drilling boom-towns. -
The Biden administration is trying to dramatically change how and where oil and gas drilling occurs on federal land, which is getting mixed reviews in longtime boom towns like Farmington, N.M.
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Idaho has more backcountry airstrips and wilderness pilots than any state other than Alaska. Many airstrips were incorporated into protected wilderness but now conservationists are challenging them.
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Environmental groups have filed suit against the state of Utah arguing leaders aren't doing enough to prevent the state's namesake Great Salt Lake from drying up. -
When the deadly wildfires ignited on Maui, tourists were turned away. Three weeks later, business owners are eager for them visit — responsibly.
