They key words here are: "in a number of areas"

In a number of areas indeed. Can a plane fly without oil drillers, oil refiners, fuel trucks, and jet fuel?

Or in a more generalized form: For some X, thing Y is better at X.

Having said that, I in no way belong to those people who think that nature is magical and humans can never do better.

We can quite easily make incremental improvements some of the time.

Note that I consider it an improvement if it still does everything else equally well and some new things better.

If on the other hand, it can't do some things, then it is only useful in a number of areas.

So a plane is not an improvement on a bird, but a bird immune to some pesticide would be an improvement IF that immunity didn't have a huge cost.

Or we can say it's better only when lots of that pesticide is in its environment and worse otherwise.