Kirk Siegler
@KirkSiegler
Followers
8K
Following
2K
Media
2K
Statuses
12K
NPR national desk correspondent covering rural America and the Western US. I no longer use twitter regularly.
🪂
Joined September 2010
AUDIO: Colorado is under a voter-mandated deadline to reintroduce wolves. On Morning Edition, we ask folks there if the state’s mountains are now too crowded for the animals to survive:
npr.org
Colorado's urban population flipped the state from red to blue, allowing a referendum on a polarizing issue to pass. Wildlife officials are now preparing for the reintroduction of gray wolves.
3
0
1
The new onshore oil and gas.rule may dramatically curtail new leasing for drilling but it could also free up more federal resources to help towns like this diversify into more outdoor rec economies. Still,.not everyone is happy.
1
0
0
Listen: this morning we are getting the view on the Biden administration’s proposed drilling reforms on public land from.Farmington, New Mexico, where the surrounding San Juan Basin once supplied California with much of its coal and gas
npr.org
The Biden administration is trying to dramatically change how and where oil and gas drilling occurs on federal land, which is getting mixed reviews in longtime boom towns like Farmington, N.M.
1
2
2
Listen: on Weekend Edition, take a trip with us into the remote Idaho wilderness - by plane.
npr.org
Idaho has more backcountry airstrips and wilderness pilots than any state other than Alaska. Many airstrips were incorporated into protected wilderness but now conservationists are challenging them.
1
1
3
WATCH: there is controversy though, as there’s been an explosion in just general aviation at landing strips like this one at a U.S. Forest Service ranger station strip on the middle fork of the Salmon River. Tune in tomorrow
0
0
2
Tune in to NPR’s.Weekend Edition this weekend.for as we fly into some of the most remote country in the lower 48, Idaho’s Frank Church River of No Return - where dozens of “inholdings” predating the federal wilderness designation in 1980 allow for landings and other uses.
1
2
12
has to be one of the closest federal wilderness to a major US metropolitan area, if not the closest?
2
0
6
Meanwhile the BLM through multiple administrations now has not moved to round up Bundy's cows after federal agents stood down in 2014 amid a threat of a shoot out near the Bundy ranch.
1
1
1
decades later, Bundy's cattle continue to graze illegally and groups that filed the suit including the Western Watersheds Project say federal land managers are still failing to protect the turtles and other critters.
2
1
5
Long before the 2014 armed standoff with the U.S. government, Bundy's *beef* with the feds started after a land swap that allowed Las Vegas to expand in exchange for tougher protections for the Mojave desert tortoise.
Breaking: a federal lawsuit has been filed seeking to force the U.S. government to enforce environmental laws and remove rancher Cliven Bundy's cows from federal lands where they have been illegally grazing on .in Nevada since at least 2014.
1
3
10
Breaking: a federal lawsuit has been filed seeking to force the U.S. government to enforce environmental laws and remove rancher Cliven Bundy's cows from federal lands where they have been illegally grazing on .in Nevada since at least 2014.
18
65
316
A Forest Service crew this week is using dynamite to clear a trail that was covered by an earthquake-triggered rockslide in the Sawtooth Wilderness in 2020.
2
0
1
Maui Police Chief John Pelletier says all urban search and recovery of the burn zone in Lahaina will be finished by today, though some searches for human remains in the ocean will continue
2
1
1
Lt. Ryan Edgar is leading an elite Army “search and extraction” team helping recover bodies from the deadly wildfire here in Lahaina. With so many people still unaccounted for, he told me their main mission now is to bring closure to families.
0
2
9
Update: anti-government extremist Ammon Bundy was arrested over the weekend near his home in Emmett, Idaho. On Morning Edition, we look at the backstory:
npr.org
Ammon Bundy was ordered to pay an Idaho hospital tens of millions of dollars after leading armed protests there. But the antigovernment extremist might not pay the fine.
0
3
11
Breaking: a federal judge has shot down the state of Utah's effort to shrink the boundaries of two large national monuments, including Bears Ears, which is considered sacred to western tribes.
1
0
7
Update: an Idaho jury has ordered Ammon Bundy and his associates to pay more than $50 million but it's unclear whether the plaintiffs in a civil case will ever see the money. Here's my latest:
npr.org
A jury as ordered Ammon Bundy and an associate to pay more than $50 million in damages to Idaho's largest hospital after armed protests last year led to a security lockdown.
0
3
6
Update: an Idaho jury has ordered anti government extremist Ammon Bundy and his associates to pay more than $50 million to a Boise hospital in connection with armed protests that led to a security lockdown last year.
1
5
34
Jurors in the Ammon Bundy civil case are back deliberating today with a verdict expected at any time.
St. Luke’s suggested $37 million to the jury as a fair number for compensatory damages from Ammon Bundy and other defendants.
1
2
7
Experts say the case is drawing parallels to how the Aryan Nations was ultimately driven out of of northern Idaho - they were bankrupted by the legal system.
0
1
31