mstewart44..........as Louis pointed out, lion hunting is closed in Botswana.
It is important to note that the topic is specifically related to the hunting of lions that are raised and released to be hunted in areas with high-fence. It has nothing to do with lion hunting in other countries.
When one looks at the overall picture, it is beginning to look like lion permits will be getting a scarce as hens teeth. Wild free roaming lions are currently on quota in parts of Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, CAR and Cameroon. Those are the ones I know of.............and things are further limited by what CITES allows for export quotas on sport trophies from the various countries and then that is further regulated by the USFWS if you are an American hunter. All together it does not add up to a lot of lions available to hunters every year.
The real problem for all countries with lion populations will be keeping the lion from being uplisted by CITES at future meetings. For a while it looked like the African Lion was going to be one of the items on the agenda at the CITES conference in Qatar, March 13-25th of this year, but that has apparently been dropped. It does not however, mean that it will not be front and centre at the next CITES conference and we all have to keep our fingers crossed that current conservation initiatives will address concerns about lion management for the future.