Kirk Siegler
Kirk Siegler is a national correspondent for NPR News. As a roving reporter, he covers the western U.S. with an emphasis on rural issues, water and the effects of climate change on smaller communities and former natural resource dependent towns. Recent assignments have taken him to the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona where indigenous groups are protesting mines proposed on ancestral lands that are also seen as key to the Biden administration's goals of transforming the U.S. transportation grid to electricity.
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 is also frequently deployed to national and international breaking news events, from the deadly wildfires on Maui, to hurricanes in Louisiana to mass shootings in Florida to a devastating earthquake in Nepal. In 2015, 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 disaster.
In 2022, he was awarded a fellowship from the United Nations Foundation to report on climate change which took him to the Brazilian Amazon to report on the effects of deforestation and to the tiny Caribbean island nation of Dominica which is still recovering from the deadly 2017 Hurricane Maria.
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 NPR West in Culver City, California for seven years. 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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American farmers hope the Iran ceasefire holds and fertilizer and diesel start moving through the Strait of Hormuz soon, as row crop farmers go into their fourth straight planting season in the red.
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New federal data shows American farmers are planting millions fewer acres of corn and wheat in response to much higher fertilizer prices since the U.S. attacked Iran.
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Two-term GOP Sen. Steve Daines shocked Montana when he announced his retirement. Democrats worry a new independent candidate will split their party's vote. -
President Trump's controversial nominee to lead the nation's largest public lands agency faces an initial confirmation vote Wednesday as Democrats point to his past support to sell federal lands.
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The sport of ski mountaineering is new to the Winter Olympics this year but its origins go back more than a century in the Alps.
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Survivors of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires say they're in the crosshairs of the White House v. California political battle over aid. It's making it difficult for some to recover let alone rebuild.
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The White House is gutting the country's largest climate lab, which is in Colorado. State leaders say this is a political retribution campaign that will have grave consequences. -
Colorado and Utah are reporting their lowest snowpacks in recorded history. Skier visits at major resorts are way down. Without snow to refresh reservoirs, water managers are sounding alarms.
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The recovery from last year's deadly wildfires in Los Angeles has been slow and uneven for a lot of reasons, with survivors struggling to navigate a complex patchwork of systems to rebuild. -
President Trump says 2026 will be better for American farmers, thanks in part to $12 billion in new federal "bridge payments." But do farmers share that optimism?
