[sandworm101]

These are rabbits. They live very harsh life. They don't live long. They can, they are biologically capable of living many years, but they are prey for nearly everything. They also breed like rabbits. If they didn't all get mostly eaten every year we would be knee-deep in them very quickly. Tracking tech might harm a few of these animals and possibly shorten their already short lives, but the insights learned by this may protect their population for many decades.

As a practical matter, I imagine that white collar is less dangerous than the coloured tags which totally defeat their winter camo. (This is Canada, so colour is the correct spelling!) They would probably rather the collar than those tags be so easily seen by predators.