What a difference a year makes, unfortunately for the mining industry. Last year at this time, mining executives were giddy, with metals prices rising, demand soaring, and enough capital available to fuel aggressive exploration and development.

Since then, prices have retreated, production costs have jumped, and the credit markets have dried up. Although attendance was high at the Northwest Mining Association's annual convention held earlier this month in Nevada, the mood this year was decidedly different, says Bill Orchow, the trade group's president and recently retired CEO of Spokane-based Revett Minerals Inc.

"I think there's a big pullback. The whole landscape has changed. There isn't any money lying around. Credit is hard to come by."

Still, Orchow says there was some optimism at the convention that the industry would begin to recover in 2009.

"The sentiment from the speakers and the panels was that somewhere near the end of the first half or into the second half of next year, things should turn around," he says. "The basics are still there. If there is a modest change with the economy, we'll be right back where we were."

Silver has been selling recently for between $9 and $10 a troy ounce, well down from the $14 an ounce it was fetching a year ago. Gold, meanwhile, was trading at about $825 earlier this week, about $35 an ounce more than a year earlier. Perhaps more notably, however, is that prices for some of the metals produced as important by-products at gold and silver mines, including lead, copper, and zinc, all have fallen sharply in the last year.

"It could be a little tough for a while, even for the commodities," says Vicki Veltkamp, vice president for investor relations at Coeur d'Alene-based Hecla Mining Co. "Precious metals are probably going to be among the first to recover, but I don't have a crystal ball that will tell us when."

Hecla made some big moves this past year, selling off its properties in the politically volatile country of Venezuela, and spending $750 million for the about 70 percent stake in the Greens Creek mine, in Alaska, that it didn't already own. Owning 100 percent of Greens Greek is expected to double Hecla's overall silver output.

Yet like other mining companies, Hecla has been hurt by lower metals prices and higher costs, and while the company already has paid off 80 percent of the debt related to its Green's Creek acquisition, financing the remaining debt has been a challenge.

Veltkamp says the company is working to restructure that debt and is cutting costs to preserve cash. It announced recently that it will defer its January preferred stock dividend payment.

Hecla expects to produce about 11 million ounces of silver next year, up from an anticipated 9 million this year and 5.6 million in 2007, Veltkamp says.

Meanwhile, Coeur d'Alene-based Sterling Mining Co. announced in September that it was suspending operations at the historic Sunshine Mine in North Idaho, saying that production at the mine, which began late last year, was falling short of its target.

Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp. has suspended operations temporarily at its Cerro Bayo mine in Chile to conserve cash. It said recently, however, that it is close to full production at its new San Bartolome mine in Bolivia, and is on pace to open its Palmarejo mine in Mexico in March. Those two mines are expected to boost Coeur's overall silver output to 24 million ounces next year, compared with 11.5 million ounces in 2007 and 13 million ounces this year. Meanwhile, the Coeur d'Alene company is fighting a legal challenge to its tailings permit at the proposed Kensington mine in Alaska.