The Pumpkin Parade is in peril.

City workers will no longer pick up pumpkins left behind after the annual Pumpkin Parade, where thousands of jack-o’-lanterns line Toronto’s parks the night of Nov. 1.

Officials said organizers of the individual Pumpkin Parades will have to be responsible for their own cleanup.

“In the past, yes, we did have the resources to do so. (Now) we don’t have the capability without diverting other staff from other functions,” said parks manager Ray Stukas. He said that if park staff face a big mess, they’ll get in touch with the permit holder for the parade and pursue possible penalties.

“People come and leave their pumpkins, they walk around and look at the other pumpkins, then they go home. That’s the whole point of the Pumpkin Parade,” said Brian Torry, co-chair of the Roncesvalles-Macdonnell Residents’ Association and a regular attendee. “Crazy.”

The Pumpkin Parade was first held in Sorauren Park in Roncesvalles — still the biggest, with more than a thousand pumpkins in 2010 — but the tradition has spread throughout the city.

“This time they’re saying the problem is yours … which kind of ruins the parade. If people are coming and going, removing their pumpkins … there will never be that critical mass of pumpkins to make a really beautiful effect,” said Heather Bean, former Roncesvalles resident and organizer of the parade at East Lynn Park, near Danforth and Woodbine Aves.

Bean’s parade attracted more than 600 pumpkins last year. Parks workers came and cleaned all of them up the morning of Nov. 2.

Bean lived in Roncesvalles until three years ago, when she moved to East York and helped found the Pumpkin Parade at East Lynn Park. The idea has spread to other parks around the city, both through legitimate permits and guerilla pumpkin placement.

Bean and her colleagues are raising money to help the parade go forward. She has received cleanup estimates as high as $2,000 when using a private company.

“I understand you could argue this isn’t standard city operations,” Bean said, “but it also seems like the sort of community-building effort that isn’t too much trouble to support and has great benefits for the community.”