The debate over polar bear conservation in Canada's North goes beyond polar bear numbers, says expert Doug Clark. (CBC)

Northern Canadians concerned about polar bears are in Whitehorse this weekend to discuss the bears' future, hot on the heels of a national summit that an organizer says helped open dialogue on the issue.

About two dozen delegates, including field workers, biologists, wildlife management officials and Inuit representatives, have gathered at Yukon College from Friday until Sunday for a pan-northern workshop on polar bear conservation.

The workshop comes two weeks after federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice hosted 70 delegates for a national roundtable on the same subject, in the hopes of bridging a divide between scientific opinion that says polar bears are threatened and Inuit beliefs that bear populations are rising.

"We need to all do a better job at integrating all the knowledge that everyone possesses: scientists, elders, hunters on the land," event organizer Doug Clark, the college's scholar-in-residence, told CBC News.

Clark, a polar bear population expert, said he's seeking an exchange of information and understanding on the complicated and sensitive issue.

The topic of polar bear conservation, Clark said, is much bigger than a debate on whether populations are growing or decreasing. It's not necessarily a matter of science pitted against traditional knowledge, he added.

"If we simply try to make scientists listen to elders more, or try to simply do more of the sorts of things that have conventionally been done to try and involve northerners in science, we won't get as far as we need to," Clark said.

"We need a third way."

While polar bears have become a symbol for climate change's effects on the planet, Inuit living alongside polar bear populations say they are seeing more bears, including some that have invaded their communities.

"I'm hoping that we discuss some issues that are facts from [an] Inuk perspective and see where we can identify what is the real problem here," said Gabriel Nirlungayuk, wildlife director with Inuit land-claim organization Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., who will be among the speakers at the weekend workshop.

Canada is home to about two-thirds of the world's polar bears, but scientists warn populations are starting to shrink due to thawing sea ice, over-hunting, industrial activity in the Arctic and an increase of toxins in the food chain.

The polar bear is a "species of special concern" in Canada, which is less severe than "threatened" and "endangered" under the federal Species At Risk Act. In May 2008, the U.S. government declared the polar bear to be a threatened species.