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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Despite public health warnings about benzene contamination in the town's water supply, some Paradise residents say they have no choice but to return. -
Western towns surrounded by and dependent upon public lands are forced to get creative as federal recreation budgets continue a slow decline. They are boosting local efforts to maintain public access. -
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? -
People who survived the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history were told this week that they cannot camp out or park RVs on their destroyed properties. They must keep waiting. -
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. -
More than two months after the Camp Fire, the small city of Chico, Calif., is struggling to handle an influx of an estimated 20,000 new people from neighboring Paradise. -
The partial federal government shutdown has furloughed thousands of people who work on millions of acres of public land across the country. That means work on critical projects has mostly stopped. -
Last month's deadly Camp Fire has become a turning point in the debate over how western forests should be managed.
