Kirk Siegler

The federal government owns huge swaths of land in the West. How it came to have all that land and authority over it is complicated and fraught with ages old controversies. NPR explor...

In Harney County, Oregon, Sheriff David Ward's patience is wearing thin. It's been several days since armed, anti-government militants took over a federal wildlife refuge.

Armed militants occupying a natural refuge in a remote part of Oregon say they will stay until the land is under local control. The local sheriff has pleaded repeatedly with the occupiers to leave.

Over the weekend, armed men took over part of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. It's the latest armed confrontation in a simmering anti-federal government movement in the rural West.

California's historic drought provided a glimpse of what skiing might be like with climate change. Industry executives are counting on their customers being flexible in the years ahead.

A Utah legislative commission has voted to move forward with suing the federal government in an attempt to seize control of millions of acres of federal land.

Los Angeles public schools are reopening Wednesday morning, after a terrorist threat on Tuesday led to a controversial decision by administrators to close all of the district's roughly 1,000 schools.

Los Angeles has the largest population of chronically homeless people in the country. The city is wrestling with how to deal with a growing homeless population that is spreading far beyond Skid Row.

The two states in the news over the past week with high-profile mass shootings have taken big steps in recent years to tighten gun laws. Is a focus on open carry or mental health the best way forward?

NPR remembers the three people killed in last Friday's shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.

The shooting massacre at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs on Friday is just the latest example of how polarized the city has gotten politically over issues such as gun control.

Ecuador's economy is faltering thanks to a year of record low oil prices and fears of a "godzilla" El Niño forming in the Pacific Ocean. The situation is drawing bizarre parallels to ...

Inspired by the events at Mizzou, students at Occidental College in Los Angeles recently got administrators to agree to a list of demands and are pledging to hold them accountable.

After four years of brutal drought, early season storms are bringing record snow to California's Sierra Nevada. The storms are hardly drought busters, but that's not stopping people from celebrating.

When cacao farmers like Emilio Rivera first heard of a government-backed initiative that would help them prune branches and leaves from their trees, they were skeptical.

After all, a lush cacao tree with more, not fewer, branches meant more profits, the farmers said. That's been the traditional way of ...

From the rim of Ecuador's Pululahua Geobotanical Reserve, it's at least a 45-minute drive (no, more like plunge) down a winding, bone-crushing dirt road to the floor of the crater. But it's well worth it. After all, how often do you get to say you've traveled to what's billed as ...

In parched California, water managers and emergency management officials are preparing to move from one extreme to another with predictions of a "too big to fail" El Niño winter ahead.

The Valley Fire leveled hundreds of homes and businesses in the small community of Middletown, Calif. School is helping students and educators alike make it through the recovery process together.