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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Thousands of firefighters are deployed to dangerous megafires in the West, the first big tests to the added safety protocols fire managers scrambled to get in place amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Most buildings in Lake Charles, La., were damaged by Hurricane Laura. As the city tries to rebuild amid a global pandemic, Mayor Nic Hunter worries the country will look away.
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Normal protocols for hurricane evacuation, aid distribution and recovery have been upended by the threat of the coronavirus.
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The agency serves areas where private carriers won't go. And in those remote communities, which helped elect the president, the Postal Service can be seen as a lifeline as well as a human connection.
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Some schools across the country are under pressure to reopen for in-person classes, even in states like Idaho where coronavirus cases continue to rise out of control.
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The Trump administration is planning to withdraw William Perry Pendley as its nominee to lead the agency. Pendely has faced criticism for past statements in support of selling off public land.
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Republican senators facing tough reelections may be in the hot seat when it comes time to vote on President Trump's controversial nominee to head the nation's largest public lands agency.
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The judges reject an attempt by the government to get a retrial in the case stemming from an armed standoff on public land near Bundy's ranch.
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Rural "critical access" hospitals, often some of the largest employers in small towns, have been operating on razor-thin margins throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
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The pandemic has exposed disparities in healthcare among people of color, and tribal communities are among the hardest hit. The state is trying to change that with free mass testing.