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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Police are giving few details and contradictory information about the apparent murders of four University of Idaho students on Sunday.
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Police have yet to make any arrests in connection with the deaths of four University of Idaho students. The incident has shaken the small college town of Moscow.
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Incoming president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is pledging a "zero tolerance" policy on deforestation in the Amazon. But climate scientists warn the damage already done may be irreversible.
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The Republican chairman of Maricopa County, Ariz., is winning praise for his skilled handling of the election in the face of disinformation and voter conspiracy theories, mostly from his own party. -
Drought is pushing Arizona farmers to the brink as they've been cut off from the shrinking Colorado River. The crisis is also renewing questions about the viability of growing crops in a desert.
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The first cobalt mine in the United States in decades opened Friday in Idaho amid rising demand for the metal, which is a key component in electric vehicle batteries. -
The first cobalt mine in America in decades opens Friday in Idaho. The metal used in electric vehicle batteries is in big demand yet analysts say the environmental costs are also high.
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Drought is pushing Arizona farmers to the brink as they've been cut off from the shrinking Colorado River. The crisis is also renewing questions about the viability of growing crops in a desert.
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A reckoning has come for cities and farms in the desert Southwest that were built to rely on the Colorado River. -
Arizona is facing dramatic cuts in water deliveries from the drought-imperiled Colorado River. But a long-term conservation strategy is assuaging fears.
