Your questions are good. Here is my view:

For most common species in the hobby the whole "saving for future reintroduction" argument isn't valid. Partly for the reason you listed...breeding for traits that aren't necessarily going to be successful in the wild. I happen to agree with you...a "normal" ball python is beautiful and I don't particularly want to create all sorts of inbred morphs just for appearance, rarity, or collecting's sake. There may be a lot of invisible mutations and health issues we are breeding into our animals along with that nice pattern. And, as the resulting animals aren't put to the rigors of life in the wild, we may never know the disadvantages we end up giving them. I for one don't select artifically produced morphs. Almost every herp I would choose has a perfectly beautiful character in its natural state. If I bred for anything it would be genetic vigor and overall health.

There is a bit of a myth about re-establishing a vanished species by using captive bred animals. For a very few critically endangered animals this might happen, but the expense and amount of work is huge, takes many years of extremely careful breeding and genetic work. Most re-introductions fail mostly because the genetic pool to work from is too limited, the habitat is destroyed or gone by that time, and any other reasons the species because endangered haven't been addressed (pesticides, poaching, predation by an invasive species, tiny gene pool, food or prey base also gone).

Look at frogs for example: chytrid fungus is wiping out species all over the planet. Keeping a captive refugia population would save some individuals from exposure to chytrid (so wild collecting has some value), but even if you produce lots of healthy frogs for re-introduction, chytrid is still present in the environment and they can easily pick it up anyway.

I happen to have a small captive group of frogs and yes, I do use the "saving them from chytrid" argument. Sure it makes me feel somewhat better, but it doesn't do it all. Whether I will ever be able to produce healthy cbb froglets for reintroduction to the wild is very doubtful. The other interest is in researching successful captive breeding for the species in the first place...hardly anyone has been successful anywhere in the world. But, I also use my frogs to educate anyone who will listen about conservation, why we should care about odd wildlife at all, respect for life other than human, why habitat preservation is needed, general good stewardship toward the planet.

There is one valid aspect of captive breeding as it relates to species conservation...if we end up supplying enough cbb animals to satisfy the global demand, we do take collection pressure off the wild population.

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