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Management and scientific knowledge are both critically important to natural resource management, but tension often exists among them. Ecological scientific knowledge is necessary, but insufficient for effective natural resource management because it does not address human values and decision-making processes within human-ecological systems. Management knowledge has great value because it is derived from ‘learning by doing', but it is seldom documented, and it is difficult to generalize and transfer to other applications because it is highly context specific. These knowledge sources have been developed by different actors, to achieve unique goals, and rely on separate approaches for their development so it should be expected that these sources occasionally support divergent management and policy recommendations. This establishes a clear need for a procedure to assess and blend existing management and scientific knowledge to synergistically inform natural resource management, in addition to the co-production of new knowledge among various stakeholders. Inconsistencies among management and scientific knowledge often originate from evaluation at inappropriate temporal or spatial scales, incongruous assumptions, or inappropriate framing of issues under consideration. Therefore, development of a framework capable of systematic evaluation of the assumptions, context, and conclusions of each knowledge source represents one approach to achieve this goal. A second approach involves the simultaneous, but independent, application of both knowledge sources to a common goal in an experimental setting so that the respective outcomes can be monitored. Agreement among knowledge sources will provide a robust knowledge base, while inconsistencies will provide hypotheses for further evaluation. The greatest short-term benefit of this procedure would likely be more constructive interaction, greater understanding, and increased trust among representatives of both knowledge sources.