[url]http://www.azcentral.com/ent/pop/articles/0505redhair05.html[/url]

[QUOTE]If predictions by the Oxford Hair Foundation come to pass, the number of natural redheads everywhere will continue to dwindle until there are none left by the year 2100.
The reason, according to scientists at the independent institute in England, which studies all sorts of hair problems, is that just 4 percent of the world's population carries the red-hair gene. The gene is recessive and therefore diluted when carriers produce children with people who have the dominant brown-hair gene.

Dr. John Gray's often publicized explanation of his foundation's findings: "The way things are going, red hair will either be extremely rare or extinct by the end of the century."

Red hair - the kind that does not come from a bottle - certainly has made the endangered list. But with 4 percent of 6.4 billion people carrying the gene, says one scientist, it is too large a figure to be wiped out completely in the next 95 years.[/QUOTE]

[url]http://snafu-ed.blogspot.com/2007/08/redheads-going-extinct-say-scientists.html[/url]

[QUOTE]Less than 2% of the world's population has natural red hair, which was created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago.[/QUOTE]

Something I can't find in the articles posted but was quoted on the radio is the mutation that causes red hair also allows the person to produce more Vitamin D from sun light but increases risks of skin cancer.

Now in Northern Europe the ability to produce more Vitamin D in an area which has less sun would be an advantage, which with modern diets is no longer so. Some estimates are that redheads could vanish by 2060, although the gene will probably carry on for several more generations.