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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In the aftermath of the New Zealand mosque shootings, experts who monitor hate groups say violent white extremism is on the rise and is the most prominent threat. -
Residents of Paradise, Calif., are being given reassurances that their town — almost completely destroyed by last fall's Camp Fire — will be rebuilt. But will the new town be too expensive for many? -
Paradise, Calif., is a skeleton these days after mostly burning to the ground last November. Months later, there's growing acceptance very few people will be able to move back anytime soon. -
A federal grant for basic infrastructure projects is stalled. There is concern that, if fire survivors don't see evidence that recovery has begun, they could give up hope and leave the region. -
Last month's deadly Camp Fire has become a turning point in the debate over how western forests should be managed. -
Eight of the top 10 states with the highest suicide rates are in the Mountain West. Grand Junction, Colo., has launched an ambitious effort starting in the schools to try to address the problem. -
For the first time in years, Delta County in western Colorado is experiencing population growth, one indicator that rural Americans are increasingly feeling optimistic about their economic future. -
Less than a month after declaring a mistrial, Judge Gloria Navarro said there can be no retrial against the Nevada rancher and three other men, who led an armed standoff with federal agents in 2014. -
For over two decades, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has been a lightning rod. Now, it's under review along with 26 other monuments and serves as example of what has people worked up. -
Most mornings and afternoons, a newly built footpath that plunges through a grove of towering redwoods is clogged with workers and school kids.