Aside from their beauty, the butterflies you release will enter the natural kingdom in the area and, after locating suitable habitat, will increase the numbers of the species. Even though the butterflies have been raised in protected conditions, they are not domesticated. They are as wild as their counterparts that exist in the area.
Butterflies are also important pollinators. Most consider the little worker bees common around as the more efficient pollinators, and they are very efficient, but the honey bees we are familiar with are not native to
Many native flowers are not pollinated by bees. Only butterflies with their long proboscis can reach into the flower blossom deep enough to pollinate these species. The plants and the butterflies evolved over the eons to depend upon each other. Secondly, unlike bees which are generally restricted to a local area, many butterflies are always on the move and can cross pollinate over a large area improving the genetic mix of genes of the plant community.
The Monarch butterfly and the Painted Lady butterfly, which are two species of butterflies permitted by the U.S.D.A. for interstate shipment for release, are even more important as pollinators as they are both migratory. When they migrate, both northward in the spring and southward in the fall, they move pollen grains of both spring blooming plants and fall blooming plants over the distance of the migration improving genetic diversity in the plant species.
Today, the Monarch and the Painted Lady butterfly populations are not considered endangered nor threatened, but their migration is considered an "Endangered Natural Phenomenon - A spectacular aspect of the life history of an animal or plant species involving a large number of individuals that is threatened with impoverishment or demise; the species per se need not be in peril, rather, the phenomenon it exhibits is at stake." according to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Migratory Pollinators Program. Releasing these butterflies is a proactive effort to insure this migration continues by adding numbers of these butterflies to the breeding population in order to maintain the very large numbers necessary to sustain their migrations.
Inside state borders, butterflies of other species may be offered for release, most notably in
Butterfly farming, like beekeeping, is an established industry although beekeepers have a head start on butterfly farmers by about 5,000 years with ancient Egyptian records of the practice. Butterfly farming, however, as we know it today, parallels the growth of the modern beekeeping industry with roots dating back to the mid nineteenth century. Over the last century and a half, some goals remain the same like supplying butterflies for enjoyment in butterfly house exhibits and collection specimens, but goals have, also, changed in that ceremonial releases have become an important proactive ecological program for maintaining wild populations of these wonderful insects and also native plants that depend on them.
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: http://www.desertmuseum.org/pollination/monarchs.php
North American Pollinator Protection Campaign: http://www.nappc.org/