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 one of the poorest rural regions of the country's poorest state, a Black entrepreneur is helping Black owned businesses open and thrive even during the pandemic. -
The newly passed infrastructure bill could lead to a boom in solar production requiring a lot more land, including farmland. But research is showing solar panels might actually help grow some crops. -
Seven people were shot and three died in a recent shooting at a mall in Boise, Idaho. Killings with few deaths aren't considered mass shootings by FBI standards, but still traumatize communities.
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Vaccination rates in much of rural America remain low. But there's one consistent holdout demographic: seniors, many of whom remember lining up eagerly as children to get the polio vaccine. -
Vaccination rates in rural America remain extremely low, but there's one holdout demographic: seniors — many of whom remember lining up eagerly to get the polio vaccine as children.
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At the same time Montana hospitals are seeing record numbers of Covid patients, county health officers are resigning or being forced out by elected officials who don't follow public health guidance. -
Marking Indigenous Peoples' Day, tribes are calling on Congress to swiftly pass the infrastructure bill — which they say would begin to address historical inequities in Indian Country.
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The Biden administration is restoring the original boundaries of two large national monuments in Utah - Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante.
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Ranchers in North Dakota have been forced to sell off their herds at historic rates. Now they're worried they won't have enough feed to keep their remaining cows alive this winter. -
After a prolonged and bitter nomination, the Senate has narrowly confirmed Tracy Stone-Manning to be the next U.S. public lands chief.
